


Double Meaning

by kanadka



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: (after a fashion), Espionage, F/M, Flirting, Loyalty, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27337624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanadka/pseuds/kanadka
Summary: After Neroon is gone, Lennier asks Delenn why she trusted someone like him in the first place.
Relationships: Delenn & Lennier, Delenn & Neroon, Delenn/Neroon
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Double Meaning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/gifts).



"But how did you know you could trust him?" asked Lennier, once all was said and done and rightful order had been restored to Minbar.

Delenn was at something of a loss to answer his question. It had taken her some time to work it out, for Neroon did not make his intentions so publicly known. Indeed, they were as black as his uniform and about as hard to pierce. Irony that he had vanished into great light. Irony, and accolade.

\--

Tuzanor had never seemed so hostile as when she returned to it in the days following the Dreaming ritual, and there faced the naked animosity of her peers. True, the Religious Caste of Tuzanor did not outwardly react—all Religious Caste were taught better than that, to temper their emotions and remain calm in the face of no matter what irrationality. And they had not put her up in some hotel but had rather rented her a handsome apartment for the duration of her stay.

But there was a quiet in their actions that hadn't been there before that did not speak of the subservience to which she was accustomed from other members of the Religious Caste. There was a tenseness; a coldness. People didn't look up, or make eye contact. Indeed, neither had Lennier out of respect so many years ago, but this was for a different reason. It was not through respect they treated her such; rather, it was through disrespect. Her apartment was in a section of the city ill-used by her fane, only for very young mostly-administrative clerics, no families or children, and that had not escaped her attention. You are different now, they were saying. You are not one of us.

That was itself nothing new. She had been different—half-human—for over a Minbari cycle by this point. Had not her fane become accustomed to her new appearance? Had they not adjusted? The Religious Caste all over the Federation had been hateful to her initially upon news of her transformation. It had only increased. Delenn, then, had had no idea how much farther it would continue to do so.

Tuzanor, though, was not a city of only Religious Caste. There were Warriors here, there were Workers. Delenn had on a daily basis far fewer interactions with them, for they kept to themselves. (As, she supposed, on some further reflection, the Religious too kept to their own caste.) People were not gregarious, yet they had never really been, either. Babylon 5 had somewhat altered her expectations of open friendliness.

Still, Tuzanor was always a city of equal castes. So why, then, did it seem as though there were so many more Warriors?

They must merely make themselves more visible with their black uniforms, Delenn supposed. All that black against a bright silver-blue sky. Selection bias. She attributed it to her being a pariah, and more hated by the Warriors than the Religious or Workers. To being unwanted, because she was half-human now and this sat ill with all, but especially the Warrior Caste, who held no love for humans.

Delenn, however, had business in Tuzanor that would not wait. Moreover, the Dreaming ritual was not simplistic and required time spent in careful meditation as she recuperated both from the Whisper Gallery and its nightmares and the nav'sha liquor. Her dreams would plague her for a number of days. It would be best to remain on Tuzanor, not tempt fate by travelling through hyperspace, which would only intensify and prolong the reaction.

But her great home city of Tuzanor seemed unwilling to allow her to remain. Every building, every black uniform, every priest said it without words: _you are not one of us. You don't belong here anymore._

 _Return to Babylon 5... and stay there._ A familiar sentiment. Neroon must have his hand in this, too.

It was therefore very rational that she asked, when a group of five Warriors approached her, "Star Riders, I presume?"

They did not clarify either way. "I'm Alyt-nali Fashar," said one, stepping forward to introduce himself. He had a provincial accent that sounded continental polar; at any rate, his Adronato was non-native and he made little attempt to cover his grammatical mistakes. This gave him a brusque tone which in the Religious Caste would have been considered offensive and casual. "I and my team have been requested to provide an escort for you."

"I need no escort," said Delenn. "This is my _city_. I was _born_ here."

"We're your escort," said Alyt-nali Fashar.

"I don't need you," said Delenn. Lennier, beside her, raised his arms in defence; she put a hand on his wrist to tell him to back down. Two against five was no contest. And in any case, surely the Warriors were not so craven that they would attack when they had such an obvious advantage? Where was the honour in that?

(But they'd attacked Earth, and they kept on attacking when they had the obvious advantage. The difference was that back then, Delenn had _bid_ them to do so. It was Delenn's voice that had told them to strike. Now, it looked, they answered to no one but their own caste. Where was the natural order of society? Where was the Warrior who heeded the wisdom of the Religious?)

Two of the warriors murmured to one another in their tongue, softly enough so that Delenn couldn't hear it. This felt deliberate; a slight to her newfound human hearing. "We _will_ be escorting you through the city," Alyt-nali Fashar said again, "for the duration of your stay in Tuzanor. We already know when you are scheduled to depart. We will accompany you during this time."

Delenn's business in the city required solitude, but it didn't look like she had much of a choice. Though... she might, in a way. An accent like Fashar's meant he wasn't a local. He wouldn't know this place like she did. She could lose the tail.

"I accept," she said, "your most... gracious offer of escort."

One of the warriors snorted; another one elbowed him in the gut to cover it up.

"Delenn," said Lennier beside her, in a warning tone.

She held up a hand, ignoring him. "I asked you once if you would follow me into darkness." The old ritual words came back to her now, imbued with a second meaning.

Lennier looked between her and the warriors, then back at her. A little warily, he nodded.

With a placid smile to the warriors, she bowed her thanks. The warriors did not bow in return.

Delenn gave them a day of carefree custody. In that day she did some shopping for gora stone broth (common after stressful rituals, and to settle the stomach) and visited an apothecary. She took constant rests in parks along the way, breathing deeply. The next morning she announced her intent to walk through Tuzanor to its market heart on a mission to fetch plennu tea. The warriors had offered to leave the small apartment she had been given to fetch it for her, so as not to tax her, but Delenn maintained the journey itself was part of the rite. These exact words were not strictly speaking a lie, but had the effect of misleading the warriors with the impression that she needed it for her rituals. She thus said, with every action: I am frail, I am infirm, the Dreaming has left me winded. And the warriors paid closer attention to signs of weakness than to her building strategy.

In actual fact plennu was a taste she sorely missed, one that did not come through Babylon 5 often. It had a gentle, milk-like, oaky flavour that she had not been able to replicate; Earth's oolong came close but was still galaxies away. Her heart ached that this time she would not be bringing any back, either.

Because this time in the tall market tents along Old Third Road, with the warriors thinking her feeble and distracted by the usual chaos of the market tents, Delenn ducked and darted quickly into an oils shop she knew maintained an unblocked thoroughfare to the back alley.

Lennier was instantly hot on her heels; the warriors hot on _his_. She tipped a great bottle of gal'sha oil on her way past and Lennier skidded; she grabbed his wrist and allowed the friction to carry them both forward. Two warriors remained upright; the other three had fallen in oil and struggled even to stand.

The back alley connected to Selvat Corridor, the boundary to the fifth Eleventh, which traditionally was Religious Caste territory, and where refuse collection took place once a valsta on this morning. Delenn hiked up her skirts in one breath and leapt over two large overflowing bins in another, tumbling and rolling away as she landed, then shot forward with a hard left into Marfa's shop of antiquities. Lennier was behind her—probably—she could not keep watch for him and slip under the tables like this. But there was an unmistakable drag of bone-on-wood that told her that while the warriors were not far behind, they had misjudged the height of the tables. They hadn't spent their childhood at them.

One right, then two lefts through Marfa's shoprooms. Up a flight of stairs. Over the broken step that Marfa never had fixed. (A creak and a cry as one warrior fell victim to it.) Across a tightwire to the next building that old Kelnoom of Sixth Fane of Fa had been using to dry her underclothes for the past eighty years. Do you know _this_ , haughty Star Riders? Delenn longed to yell back.

Instead she slipped through Kelnoom's sitting room and down past her libraries, which she kept open for the young priestlets eleven and under, and which contained a tunnel that Delenn hadn't used since she was about that age herself, because she was the one who _dug_ it.

Lennier was behind her; Fashar behind him. Fashar was the only one left; Fashar was nimbler than she expected. Not for nothing had he been promoted Alyt-nali, apparently.

The tunnel connected to the Janai family's backyard, through the herb garden, past the orel grove. Down the cellar and three corridors beyond that, into the Yurk family cellar. The Yurk family were great lovers of n'kep, whose ingredients grew in darkness, and their cellar was pitch black. Delenn felt around for the wall, the smooth part which guided her to the exit still waist-height. She took Lennier's hand and dragged him through; Fashar was too far behind and the darkness engulfed him without a guide to see him out.

Two corridors further. Then the stairs to street level, then across the busy road to Sech Omiri's tea shop. Alas, he didn't sell Delenn's plennu tea either but he had barrels full of cheap hexi flowers, which Delenn vaulted over. Lennier nearly didn't make it, but recovered. They waited behind their makeshift barricade in cautious silence.

No more Fashar.

"Amazing," whispered Lennier, breathing heavily.

"I told you," said Delenn. "This is _my_ city."

But her city though it was, there were still too many warriors around. Not their escort, but black and swooping all the same. Three tents over was Gethan the cloak-seller, a Worker caste merchant she'd known for decades. Delenn selected a golden robe with a hood great enough to obscure her hair and turned to pay.

Gethan the cloak-seller shook his head gravely. "I will not sell to you," he said, monotone.

"But you know me," said Delenn.

"I will not sell to you," he said again. Then he cast his eyes back to the ground and turned away, as though she weren't even fit for that respect.

They were not far from the eighth Eleventh, cutting across a public garden and through a studio that Delenn remembered had been used for a Worker Caste apprentices. But there were no young workers inside the studio. Only a set of meditation rooms and a chamber of ringing bells. Someone had removed the smelting room walls and made a stone fountain out of broken kilns which babbled merrily with perfumed water.

"Is it my pitch, or do the intervals seem off?" asked Lennier, gesturing to the bells. The bells were all repurposed worker tools.

"This feels wrong," said Delenn.

But she pressed on. Three streets and one corner block up she reached Kalla Street, where former Satai Racine lived. Delenn had worked with Racine for cycles; he would help them.

"You can take a cloak but get out," Racine said. "I don't want you here. I won't shelter you."

"We're not _Warrior_ ," spat Lennier, and Delenn assumed he was forgetting his manners briefly in the face of disrespect. "We are _Religious_. And we are _asking_ your assistance!"

"Times have changed, little priest," sneered Racine. "I'm not beholden to you anymore."

"I don't ask because you're beholden," said Delenn. "I ask a favour. As a colleague. As a friend!"

Racine snorted. "The way you asked me _favours_ for years? Voting this way or that, voting the way the Religious Caste did because they were so used to being obeyed? Were those favours? They seemed like orders. And you seemed to think little of issuing them, my _old friend._ "

"You will not talk to her in such a manner," began Lennier.

"In the absence of the Grey Council, neither of us are Satai, and neither of us are due respect the other isn't paying," said Racine.

"She is _Religious_ ," said Lennier.

That was the sticking point for Racine, wasn't it? Racine who had been born in relative poverty in the Worker Caste, whose affluence and power had risen with his appointment to the Grey Council. When Delenn broke it, she'd broken that, for him. No wonder he would resent her. And yet... "I thought you had agreed with me," she said. "The Warrior Caste overstepped its bounds with a fourth Warrior, in _my_ rightful place."

"I did no such thing," said Racine.

"You followed me from the circle," said Delenn. She had counted: five left the circle after she had broken the staff of the Chosen One, the staff that would be hers to break had she not abdicated. Two Religious Satai, three Worker Satai.

"I," said Racine, repeating himself coldly, "did no such thing."

They took the cloaks and left in silence.

Alyt-nali Fashar caught up with them back at the apartment, now with five more Warriors. "This apartment won't house all twelve of us," said Delenn.

"We've got this whole floor of flats to ourselves," said Fashar.

"That can't be," said Lennier. "This floor is occupied by members of the Tenth Fane of Elleya. They didn't just _leave_."

"We made it happen," Fashar snapped, and a few of his Warriors chuckled to themselves behind him.

"You threatened them away, you mean," said Delenn, her voice low.

Fashar gave a half-shrug. "Could be nobody wanted to room with you." He eyed her long hair, spilling over her shoulder. "Can't say I blame them."

That dismissive sarcasm. That disrespect. That was Neroon's clan, alright. Delenn turned away and closed the bedroom behind her, where at least she could have some peace from the chattering squawking of the overgrown blackbirds in her sitting room.

She needed to meditate.

\--

Days later, she returned to Babylon 5. Two messages were waiting for her, both anonymous, both from Minbar.

"It could be a threat," said Lennier. 

Lennier had been seeing threats everywhere, lately. "It could be important," she said.

But he had a point. Why encrypt the messages _and_ anonymise them? Her contacts on Minbar had their own strategies to send her information—most usually via the Rangers.

The two files were both information packages. Observed tactics both of Vorlon and Shadow vessels as well as movement patterns, both in various sectors, and in hyperspace. Some information about the movements of the Thieves Guild and the human Raiders (in trying to avoid detection or elimination by higher powers, the social parasites of their universe had scattered like insects, and their movements was the negative space imprint of yet more Vorlon and Shadow tactics). A Vorlon fleet spotted by one hyperspace beacon. 

In one file there was a set of coordinates. Aside from being in Brakiri space, Delenn did not recognise it from memory, and neither had the human ranger she had pulled aside later that day. "I can dispatch a small crew," Ruiz offered.

"Take White Stars 52 and 7," Delenn said. In the meantime, she set the rest of the information aside.

White Stars 52 and 7 returned with surprising news. "A small Brakiri fleet escaping one of their worlds," said Ruiz. "Civilians, all of them. They hadn't wanted to draw attention of the Shadows _or_ the Vorlons by making themselves known and asking for assistance, so they embarked on their own. If we hadn't come by when we did, it would've been trouble."

Delenn gave the rest of the information to the Army of Light, and when Sheridan asked where it came from, she gave her usual evasive answer: _the universe provides._ She certainly wished the universe would provide more information like this.

Which reminded her. The Battle at Coriana VI... there had been four unaccounted-for ships. Minbari Sharlin cruisers, heavy and well-armed. They had not presented themselves for identification, and they weren't listed with Religious Caste transponder signatures. So everyone—Delenn included—had assumed them Worker Caste, having absconded with Warrior Caste vessels, somehow. 

One had been destroyed in action with no survivors. The other three had retreated, and were not seen again. She hadn't thought to look for them on Minbar, but with no signature information, she wouldn't know where to begin...

They, too, were effectively anonymous. The universe had provided.

It must have been the case that this information came from the same source. Friends in mysterious places, Delenn assumed. If this information didn't come from the rangers, then who on Minbar?

But it was a lot of accumulated information and it could only have been compiled by someone space-faring. No, it must have been a ranger. The nature of the information, and the volume of it, must have made it too difficult to carry securely.

Perhaps Racine, making amends. Then again, she thought, remembering her recent experience on Minbar, perhaps her contacts outside of the Religious Caste weren't as good as she thought they were. Racine had refused her assistance, and to refuse a request of assistance wasn't just bad manners, it was dishonourable, it showed a lack of face. And no proper, well-behaved Worker would dare refuse a Religious Caste anything.

Racine must have known she wouldn't tell anyone about it for his sake. Or perhaps he thought he could later discredit her. Given her treatment in Tuzanor, he was possibly correct.

The question still dug at her. If Racine hadn't followed her out, the day she broke the Grey Council, then who had?

Delenn remembered the day well—it was too momentous an occasion not to. The rules of the Council were that within the chamber, when voting and considering motions, evidence, propositions, what-have-you, you did not have to lower your hood lest you wished to speak out in favour or against the material being discussed. If you wanted to bring something up for discussion you lowered your hood, or you remained silent. But if you wanted to vote, that did not necessarily require speaking unless you wished it; and so many votes were entirely anonymous. One could never know, therefore, who voted for a motion or against it. One could speculate, of course. If better material and financial support for a Worker Caste laboratory failed three to six, you could guess who the three in favour were. If it subsequently passed six to three because that Worker Caste laboratory made accurate weapons targeting, you could guess which three members had decided to switch their vote.

But it was never a certain thing. In a vote where everyone was silent, you could not know.

Most people followed this principle of hooded and voiceless; unmasked and outspoken. (The first time Delenn had met Neroon as Satai—a fourth Warrior Satai, what idiocy!—he hadn't, but he was the only one in generations to have failed to fulfill this basic element of courtesy. Typical, and apt.) Most followed this principle outside the chamber as well.

So when five Satai followed her outside the day she broke the Grey Council, Delenn had assumed they were the two remaining Religious Caste—Rathenn and Filarel—and the three Worker Caste—Racine, Nokoll, and Bhurel. She assumed that Coplann, Irlit, Leraval, and Neroon were the four that had remained. It made sense.

But she had not bidden them speak, and none of them had unhooded themselves. They remained spectres.

Rathenn, she knew. Rathenn told her he had thought Neroon's appointment was folly from the start, and Rathenn had worked closely with Ambassador—and Entil'Zha—Sinclair. One of those five had to be him. Filarel was one of the most fervent believers of the balance of Valen. She must have been another of the five.

Nokoll and Bhurel were two of her oldest colleagues, and they typically voted as Racine did. Could it be that they believed Racine had left the chamber, and they were not intending to follow Delenn, but rather Racine? But they could not know either. How closely I came, she thought, when I broke the council, to breaking the peace of Valen. For if the Religious Caste had stood alone against the Warrior and Worker Castes—!

By that token, however... didn't the Warrior Caste stand alone against the Religious and Worker Castes?

But that was justified! They were better armed! And anyway, the Warrior Caste always stood alone. They were irascible, belligerent, unreasonable. The Religious Caste _needed_ the influence of the Worker Caste to keep the Warriors in line, now more than ever, after the end of the war with the humans. It was justified.

It was right! Wasn't it?

Perhaps it was not the animosity of the Religious that Gethan and Racine shared when they disrespected her, nor the animosity of the Warriors, but an animosity all their own. Perhaps all three castes truly stood alone, separate from one another. Delenn wasn't sure whether that was better or worse. On one hand, no unified attack from the Warriors and Workers against the Religious. Two against one seemed unjust. On the other hand ... what did this mean for Valen's peace?

Moving along. If Racine did not follow her out of the chamber, it had to be a Warrior. But which one? Coplann and Leraval held particularly militant beliefs. They would rather die than follow her, she knew. Irlit... Irlit was more difficult to predict. Irlit was unknown to Delenn, which Delenn didn't like. Perhaps it was she.

It must have been, because it couldn't have been Neroon.

Surely.

He wouldn't.

\--

Not long after, Delenn met Forell, and the Drakh, and it upended what she knew of her home city, her homeworld, and her caste. It upended that, and it enraged her.

Violence all over Minbar! Breaking Valen's ban in all but name—the Warrior Caste refusing to honour contracts and perform the duties that they had been contracted to do by the Religious Caste. It was unthinkable, it was out of control. And if there was one thing the Religious Caste liked, it was control. This instability had grown like a wildfire, and Delenn didn't like the thought of what it would take to put it out.

She had had her suspicions, but now she knew. Fashar and his little crew of watchdogs during her recent stay had a new interpretation now. They _were_ Star Riders, and this was _Neroon_ and his warrior influence, his destabilising influence. Her perpetual pain in her side, her usual nemesis. She had underestimated him, long ago. She'd thought he was a warrior she could control.

As she should, as was her right as Religious!

And why not? What was the Warrior Caste for but to be controlled, as a tool of the Religious Caste, as a weapon? The Religious Caste dictated policy, like the protection afforded the Norsai and other border worlds in the Federation. The Warrior Caste was dispatched to enforce it. They did not get a choice; if the average warrior had wanted a choice, they should have been Religious Caste, or they should have climbed to a position of power.

As Neroon had, as Neroon had _stolen_ hers. Neroon was the one who upset this balance when he became the fourth Warrior Caste Satai. Who was Neroon to think he knew better than thousands of years of Religious Caste doctrine, than tradition, than Valen himself?

No, Neroon needed to be put in his place, and somehow Delenn doubted that whatever loss of face he suffered after the denn'shah was sufficient, because here he was, antagonising her yet again, this time at arm's length with a team of baby blackbirds he'd dispatched, he hadn't even the honour of showing up in person. 

He knows, she thought, enraged. He knows that he might lose against me.

\--

It had taken Delenn days to calm down.

\--

And in those days, as the blur of rage lifted, she began to perceive it a little more clearly. Perhaps some element of the nav'sha liquor remained, but things in her recollection coalesced.

She placed a single call to Minbar to ask a single question, and when she received the answer she needed, she knew for sure. The next call she placed was to Neroon himself. On his Ingata, as always, space-faring, not patrolling Minbar as he had been instructed but floating aimlessly in the stars like the Satai he shouldn't be.

He sent her a message back with a set of coordinates and a single line: _Finally. It's about time._

If she'd printed it on paper she would have crumpled it in her fist. So much for her friend in mysterious places. He'd been on her side all along, but that didn't make him kind.

\--

Neroon had arrived on her White Star with a retinue of Warriors. (Delenn recognised Fashar, front and centre. She could swear he smirked at her.) He was his usual pompous self around them, but alone, in her chamber, he was different. He was approachable, he was sensible. He was only one Minbari, after all.

"What do you think?" she had asked him. "Of the ship." (Later, she would wonder why she bothered asking. Like a young girl asking a suitor what he thought of the style of her bonecrest.)

Neroon had folded his arms across his chest and pursed his lips. "It looks like a plucked kar'ten," he said.

"That's the Vorlon design," she admitted. "I would have thought you would pay closer attention to the weapons systems."

" _I_ would have thought you knew me better, or at least trusted me better, than to think all I care about are toys to shoot people with," he snapped. "You do realise that part of why we are here is because your caste does not think mine is capable of rationality. Or aesthetics. Or higher-order brain function."

"We've had our differences," Delenn said. "Generally those differences do not come to death and warfare. And that _is_ what your caste is capable of. _It's in the name._ "

Neroon, too, looked ill at the thought of it. "This has gone too far," he said. "The Shai Alyt has stoked a flame he can't extinguish."

"Like a wildfire you can't put out," she murmured.

He sighed and nodded, and didn't bother lowering his gaze, and it felt good beyond measure to finally have someone acknowledge her, agree with her, and accept her. Even him. Indeed, especially him! For so many cycles, they had been destructive interference; now they were finally on the same wavelength. What a tragedy that it had come now, of all times.

"I think our castes have much to talk about," she said. "We have much in common." She reached out, placing a hand gently on his forearm. Encased in those thick warrior gloves, Neroon surely couldn't feel anything, but he ripped his touch away, like it burnt him.

"The Warrior Caste will not hear the Religious Caste's words anymore," he said, ruffled. "We are done with your platitudes."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because you need to listen to mine for a change. For once, a warrior has something to say, and a priest must hear it." Though Neroon did not look pleased at the prospect. Eventually he began with, "Delenn... you know there is blood on my hands."

She frowned. "You've been involved in these skirmishes," she realised. "Against our own people?"

"Not what I meant. Not on Minbar," he said. "During the war with the humans. If you truly believe they are our kind -"

"They are," she said.

"You seem to believe it," he replied. "You _ignored_ us then. You kept silence, you held your tongue. About the truth. You did it for power and hegemony. And you held that power over the Warrior Caste. Do you deny it?"

Delenn didn't. "Even when you finally knew of the relation between our two peoples, you told me you didn't believe it," she said. "You would not have believed it anyway."

That didn't justify her actions in the war, but he didn't call her on it, so he had more honour than Racine. Perhaps Neroon had not been the very worst Satai imaginable.

"I don't know what I believe," said Neroon. "You're a Minbari with _hair_ , that's unbelievable."

"Everyone on Minbar would rather not see it," she said. "You've said as much yourself, you think it revolting."

"I said that to humiliate and hurt you," he admitted. "It was baseless and cruel."

"It _was_ ," Delenn said. 

"It's not revolting," he blurted. "It's ..." Neroon lapsed into silence, his mouth working but no words emerging. Finally he sighed. "I don't know what it is," he said, flushing.

She sat straight up, heart pounding. "You didn't come here to speak of this."

"I know I helped it get this bad. I know I have had a role in this."

"I didn't bring you here to admonish you."

Neroon gave a short, loud laugh. "Good, nor would I let you! We _both_ have had a role in this. But I have honour enough to admit my accountability in it and make amends. And I do know you have honour enough to admit yours, and make your own amends."

(It was not until days after his death that she would realise he had paid her one of the highest compliments when he'd said that. At the time, she'd thought nothing of it and had skipped over it, thinking only about her own amends, and her own plans.)

"Then we shall go forward?" asked Delenn. "With the plan, with the Starfire wheel, with the Temple?"

If she had to die, what a good way to do it. To restore peace, her job at the close of the War against the Shadows finished, all transformations complete, all circles closed, and in an ancient temple, of all places. If she had to die. Perhaps it was one way to atone for her own actions.

Neroon didn't nod, or agree specifically. Instead he asked, "How did you know you could trust me? After all I've done to you—and after all you've done to me. Why me, and why now?"

Delenn thought of the two anonymous packets of information she'd been sent, and the four Sharlin cruisers that had mysteriously shown up at the most important battle of their age, and other reasons besides. "Oh, I think you know," she said.

He gave a rakish grin as he leaned closer, replying in that low drawl of his, "Enlighten me." It stole a smile from her, and his own grew.

"I would never have known that you left the Grey Council chamber the day I broke the staff of leadership, that you followed me, had Racine not admitted that he didn't," she said.

Neroon shrugged, a practiced, easy movement exaggerated by his uniform. "Perhaps I did it solely to observe, to hear what instruction you might have for your followers. To see whether you were trying to incite two castes against a third."

"I had assumed that the four who remained were Warriors," said Delenn. "I... was not particularly charitable to the Warrior Caste in my speech as a result."

"Imagine that," said Neroon.

"Yet none of the five who followed me had reacted—none had anything to say—none had disagreed with me. So I believed."

"Or," he supplied, "none of them had the courage to speak out against you. You did _break a staff_."

"I also believed," Delenn continued, "that the funerary procession of our late mutual friend Branmer had always been intended to pass through Babylon 5. It was not until I recently placed a call to his mother's side of the family that I discovered it wasn't. Allowing it to pass through the humans' station had been someone else's doing. As executive officer and therefore leader of the cortege, you would have been well-placed to make such a change. But why do it?"

"Perhaps I enjoy antagonising the humans," said Neroon. "As a sport."

"You knew I would be upset at the way you were treating the affair. You also knew that your hands were tied and you had to perform your duties to your clan. And you knew that if you granted me the chance to mourn, I would take it instead to interfere, and in so doing you could allow me the courtesy of mourning in my own way. After you had had your chance first, of course."

"Perhaps I enjoy antagonising _you_ ," said Neroon, with a smile.

"Lastly, I assumed you had sent Alyt-nali Fashar and his delegation to escort me recently on Tuzanor as a way of monitoring my movements, of controlling me. It did not occur to me that you might have sent them for my protection."

"Hm," he said. "A second interpretation to all my actions. I hope you have considered that in all these cases, it might have been both."

"I wondered for some time why you didn't come yourself. As you had when you tried to stop me earlier, when you arrived on Babylon 5 to stop me from becoming Entil'Zha."

"You wouldn't have accepted my assistance," said Neroon, "and it would have been impolitic for me to have given it so directly."

"Yes, well. You certainly left a trail of questions in your wake."

"On purpose," he said. "I cannot have some priestess keeping tabs. She might contact me years later, asking for assistance that I should be honour-bound to provide."

Delenn smiled. "That would be a shame."

For Neroon knew that if Delenn had been aware of an ally in the Warrior Caste all along, she would have called upon him for favours. Instead he had deliberately kept his hood on.

But deep down, he _believed_ , and that vindicated her.

"Yes," he told her. "We'll go forward with your plan."

\--

But, Lennier was waiting for an answer, and she thought it prudent to give him one. As usual, the truth—or something like it—seemed most appropriate.

"I didn't," she said. "I didn't trust him. I trusted the strength of his faith."


End file.
